Back at home again, recovering. Mulling it all over for a while. Sitting at my desk and enjoying a cup of chemicaff for once in my miserable stupid life. The caffeine and pseudoamphetamine ripple through my bloodstream like a convoy of rumbling cargo rigs. I can almost feel electrical arcs snapping between my teeth. Mmm. Yummy.

Ordinarily I can’t afford to keep up a chemicaff habit like sixty percent of the rest of the city, but between the couple of chips Electrofuck gave me and the small amount of pleading thank-you money the Horsebreakers gave me, I figure why not. Let’s buzz a little, enjoy life and the feeling of my implants thrumming in my head like angry metal bees.

First thing I did after getting away from the scene was call the Horsebreakers. I didn’t waste their time, broke the news. I’d never heard two people so relieved in my life. Mrs. Horsebreaker finally got to cry, and for the right reasons. They didn’t stay on the line, and I didn’t expect them to. They went to their son. I hope he’ll be on his feet soon. A few hours later I got a message from Mr. Horsebreaker, giving me a very genuine and blue-collar thank you for giving their son back to them, for succeeding where the Watch failed to even look. Said I’ve earned their family’s undying gratitude, and to call on them if I ever need anything at all, that no amount of generosity would equal the debt they owe me. The message included fifty thousand credits. That’s a lot for a plant man, but I know he’d get indignant if I tried to send it back, so. Little semi-coffee for me.

Sent some messages to everyone that needs to know about this. Deepwell congratulated me for getting out ahead of Dusk’s canvassing, but advised me that the clinic will report the two men’s appearance to the Watch, and Dusk will have them questioned the instant they recover. They’re witnesses. They’re suspects. Whatever they know, whatever they saw, the Watch is going to know it soon. The city’s going to know it. He said he’d try to get on the interview detail and sneak me a transcript once it’s done.

I’d love to wait for the report, but I can’t. Locating the two men takes a little pressure off of me, but not off the situation in general, really. I know almost for definite that Littlerock and Horsebreaker are victims, not perpetrators, but the city doesn’t. It might take days for them to regain their faculties. I don’t have that long. The people are going to be shouting for answers, and they might try to take them out of Littlerock and Horsebreaker’s hides. I need to blow the lid off this. Catch the… thing. Whatever this is.

I get an interesting message from Voldzet. His best code cutters have dug a bit more into the data they scraped off that node they broke into. Apparently, these packets indicate high-energy transmissions being relayed from several nodes across the city to buried nodes in the Subterrane, each of which route to some kind of emitter. Most of the recent transmissions are in the area of Sector Ten, which is great news for me. They don’t know precisely where these emitters are, or what the transmissions contain, but they’re loud. A bunch of different frequencies, and at an amplitude that necessitates some serious hardware. Any more than that will have to wait, if they can get it at all.

Very interesting. Why would the Brotherhood be shouting into what are basically electromagnetic loudspeakers, underground? Who are they shouting at? And who’s equipped to hear this kind of voice?

I think I know. And that means a whole hell of a lot of other people are about to know, too. Hee hee. God I haven’t had this stuff in a while. I’m giggling in my own damn head.

Voldzet offers to send some of his guys with me when I go downstairs tonight. I decline, even though it would probably be smart. I don’t want any more eyes on Rocky than are necessary. And while I don’t doubt their speed and precision, I’m not completely convinced the Surgeons are strong enough to bring down this creature, even in a team. They’re not used to fighting mages either, and this thing is like six different mages in a single rampant body. This op is gonna need a blunt instrument swung hard and fast, not a scalpel. Me, in other words. I tell him they’d be more useful watching known Subterrane access points, in the event that me and Rocky flush the thing to the surface. He says he’ll have patrols going out within the hour.

Thus is our net laid. Let’s just hope I’m up to the chase.

Few tasks to do while the sun goes down. I take out the splat gun and all the splat shots Deepwell was able to get me. Two cans of six shots. Not a ton of room for error. And that’s bad, because this thing is ostensibly a hefty pressure rifle in a normal person’s hands, but barely more than a fat machine pistol in mine. My finger won’t even fit in the trigger guard. So I cut the trigger guard off. Sorry, Deepwell. Justice demands sacrifice from us all.

The splat gun, or booger blaster if you’re feeling childish, is a pretty ingenious bit of kit. Sort of like a grenade launcher in general concept - a rotating drum of chambers connected to a battery-powered air compressor. However, the barrel is specially configured to direct splat shots rather than grenades. The gun’s not really the interesting part, it’s the ammo where it gets smart.

Splat shots are basically a kind of super hi-tech rubber cement, with some kind of payload in the middle of the jelly. Shortly after firing, a net of teeny little electrical wires suspended in the glue discharges and causes the gunk to solidify, sticking the whole glob fast to whatever it hits. Splat goo is hell to get off once it’s set, it’s like the bastard child of superglue and industrial caulk. They come in a few flavors. The most aggressive is the frag grenade, obviously. A timed electro-charge if you’re trying to disable some kind of device or incapacitate someone from a distance. And, more to my purposes, little tracking beacons, so you can follow a car or a deranged murderous automech or what have you.

These beacons, resting in their little goop-filled eggs, have been de-keyed, so I can code them to my… brain, basically. They’ll respond to the radio transceiver in my head, and after a solid meal of my signature home-cooked encryption algorithms that’s all they’ll be talking to. They won’t stand up to an actual Brotherhood data drill or anything, but they’re not supposed to live for very long regardless, so who cares. Into their cans they go, nice and safe.

I’m not used to having a gun of any kind. Kind of a strange feeling. I’ve been shot a few times but I’ve never done much actual shooting. Maybe I should try sometime. I don’t particularly like guns that much, but having one would probably be smarter than not having one. I’d just have to… buy one. Maybe next decade.

Speaking of weapons, I should talk to Tennima about rigging me some kind of… rig for my fancy new sword. These breakaway straps are convenient enough, but they flap around a lot once I’ve got the weapon in hand, and I have to go through the whole process of tying it back onto my back afterward. Surely there’s a better way. Some kind of spring-loaded windup reel thing, maybe. That’d be neat.

I eat a little more in the loose hope that the nutrients will be enough to finish the healing process on my stab wound for good. It’s not going to be fun to have to run my way through split stitches, leaking blood and vitae. If this thing is as fast and nimble as Rocky made it out to be, I’m going to be in for the chase of my life, in what is probably the most dangerous possible place for a chase outside of the Rivertwist or the Barksea.

Then I take a nap. Might as well be as rested as possible before going down.

Clocktower Cavern, as the dark voices have named it, is one of the bigger… caverns, in the upper Subterrane. One of the most open, and probably one of the most populated too, depending on where you look. The ceiling is high, the walls are so distant that you can barely make them out, and there’s actually some ambient lighting from the two or three firelit shantytowns set into the edges. It’s almost enough to trick you into thinking you’re aboveground, in some strange stony place on a moonless overcast night, with wildfires on the horizon. Clocktower Cavern also naturally connects, or has been made to connect, to a lot of capillary tunnels going north, south, east, west, and down, making it a major hub for Subterranean travel. If the Lowlifes ever built their own train station, it’d start either here or in the Coffer, below Sector Two.

I pick my way across the stones and around stalagmites along the north wall of the cave, night vision on, looking for anything Wellwarden-y. Probably the first time anyone who isn’t a traffic reporter has done that in Wellspring City history. It doesn’t take me long. Rocky’s shape is very unlike the surrounding environment.

But, predictably, there’s a problem.

A small gaggle of Lowlifes have gathered around Rocky and are looking at him with curiosity. They’re talking among themselves, so they fail to hear me approaching their flank. Rocky, for his part, is acting like a statue. It is, without a doubt, the greatest statue impression I have ever seen. Back straight, halberd planted, at attention, being literally made out of stone. Like he’s been watching over this cavern for centuries.

One of the Lowlifes, likely the bravest, is also of course the one with the most to prove. So, he takes out a spray can and aims it at Rocky’s belly.

“Hey.”

The five of them turn around to look at me, and I have to stop myself from flinching. I’m no pageant winner or anything, but these guys have all got at least a master’s degree in ugly. Deathly pale skin, wide eyes. Smeared with filth, ragged robes caked in who knows what and smelling like a barrel of pickled armpits. None of them come much higher than my diaphragm, and even if they did, they look like they haven’t had a decent meal in their entire lives. Poor fuckers.

The artist steps toward me to the head of the group and speaks first. He’s in charge of this little squad. One, he’s the biggest. Two, I can see that evil spark in his eyes. That unpredictable, sudden, violent energy. Twitchy eyes, uncontrollable hands. This is a guy that’s gotten his way in life by just being crazier and more brutal than everyone else around him. He’s more willing to choke and bite and stab than most others, so he gets all the treats. This isn’t helped by his hopeless and predictable addiction to stims. I can see the discoloration of his teeth and the outsides of his eyes that comes when regular thump stops working, and you have to move on to badbeat or runamok if you want to keep your edges sharp. This cat’s got so much edge he can probably dice vegetables by sneezing on them. He’s got about five years to live.

“And who… the fuck, are you?”

“Your new stepdad, if you don’t quit waving that knife around. All of you fuck off, I’m meeting someone here and you’re not invited.”

So now, like with all people like this, Spraycan has to decide whether I’m worth it. I’m a slab, and not a middle-size one. He would need ten more friends and some projectile weaponry to have even a glimmer of a wisp of a hope of taking me down. I don’t want to hurt him and I don’t want him to get his friends hurt in the name of his pride.

He smiles at me. He’s made his decision. The crazy one, because what else would it be.

“What if we don’t want to fuck off? It’s a free fucking cavern. We can go wherever we want.”

A couple of his compatriots don’t look too excited at this prospect. They exchange nervous glances.

I point toward the nearest glowing shantytown in the distance and reply, “You can either walk your ass down and off this hill with your own two legs, or I can save you the energy and throw you there. You might not land intestines-first on one of these stalagmites. Take your pick.”

“Think you’re tough, huh. Big man, ooh, so strong. I’ve fought big fucks like you before. You’re slow. Move like a drunk pig. And I’ll gut you like one too.”

His leg muscles tense, and he makes like he’s going to make a move on me. I don’t have the heart or the inclination to tell him that a knife that tiny would have a hard time getting through my abdominal wall if he stabbed me square in the belly, let alone anywhere else.

So, I cut him off with a move of my own. I let the vitae dam loose. Light shines out from under my skin. I surge forward and grab him by the neck, pulling him toward me. His friends all run away. They didn’t really want to get in a fight with an ogre, let alone one that glows and moves way faster than it probably should.

Spraycan chokes a little but still sinks his knife into the flesh of my forearm. I can barely feel it. His other hand scrambles trying to pry my fingers off his neck, but they might as well be iron bands.

I look at him like he’s a puppy that just shit on the carpet. I pull the knife out of my arm and his hand with one yank of my thumb and forefinger and flick it away into the dark. The wound bubbles with lambent blood and hisses iron-smelling steam for a second before sealing right before his eyes. I’m well-fed and rested - he’d need a lot more knives and a lot more arms to do any serious damage to me right now.

I pull his stupid little haywire head up close to mine, implants narrowed to glowing green pinpricks.

“I’ll ask nicely this time. Would you. Kindly. Fuck off from here. Please.”

Eyes wide like saucers, I can feel him try to nod, but my grip is making it hard. I let him go. He gasps, and immediately starts scrambling down the hill and away from me.

I cry after him, “Thank you!”, because manners are important and I aspire to be a good role model for today’s youth.

Kids on drugs, man. If I’d been just about anyone else, all five of those idiots would be draining on the floor right now.

I light one of Electro’s smokes with the fancy jet lighter he gave me. Nicotine tastes better right after two very specific and very human activities. Violence is one of them.

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Once the smelly cave rats are far enough away, Rocky rumbles, “MY THANKS. THAT YOUNG MAN WAS GOING TO PAINT ME. I HAD TO SPEND THESE TWO DAYS IN A POWERFUL CURRENT TO REMOVE THE PREVIOUS MESSAGE.”

“No worries, Rocky. That armor’s decorated enough, probably.”

“I AM ALSO GRATEFUL THAT YOU CHOSE TO BE INJURED RATHER THAN HURT THEM. THOSE YOUTHS ARE VERY MISGUIDED.”

“You beat the shit out of a puppy every time it misbehaves, all you end up with is a mean, mean dog.” I puff pensively. “And maybe he’ll think the next time he tries to get tough when he doesn’t have to. Besides,” I show him my arm, “no harm done.”

“YOU COMMAND POWERFUL MAGICS.”

“It was just a flesh wound.”

“THE ABILITY TO HEAL IS AMONG THE MOST SACRED OF ARCANE ARTS. A RESTORATIVE AND CONSTRUCTIVE ENERGY, TO BE CHERISHED.”

I snort through the smoke. “I’m not a doctor, just a pig. I only know how to heal myself.” What happened yesterday comes back to me in a flash. “I think.”

“THE SEED OF PLENTY IS WITHIN YOU. ALL YOU MUST DO IS CARE FOR IT, AND IT WILL BLOOM.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I HAVE WALKED THE GROVES, AND SPOKEN WITH MASTERS OF LIFE. I HAVE SEEN A GIFTED CHILD USE NAUGHT BUT INNOCENCE AND LOVE TO REVERSE THE DAMAGES OF HATRED AND RAGE, AS THOUGH THEY HAD NEVER EXISTED. YOUR ENERGIES ARE OF GROWTH, OF MUTATION. THEY WILL COINCIDE WITH YOUR ACTIONS. WALK WITH GRACE, AND IT WILL BECOME YOU.”

“Hm.”

I smoke and look out at the fires, burning quietly in the echoing gloom.

“You speak with a lot of reverence for magic.”

“I WILL NEVER KNOW THE MAJESTY OF THE ARCANE. IT IS NOT FOR ME, IT IS NOT OF ME. BUT I HAVE SEEN ITS GREAT WORKS, AND THEY ARE AS TERRIBLE AS THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL. I MUST RESPECT IT, AS THE MOUSE RESPECTS THE STORM.”

I think about this for a little bit.

Then I ask him, “Are you keeping an ear out for our suspect?”

“I DO NOT HAVE EARS. BUT YES, I AM.”

“I did a little digging of my own. Apparently the Brotherhood have strung up some signal transmitters through the underground, and they’re broadcasting from them in a lot of the same places that things thing has been. Loud, too.”

“I CANNOT DETECT THOSE ENERGIES. I NEVER WOULD HAVE NOTICED. WHAT SIGNALS ARE THESE?”

“My friends aren’t sure yet. But my suspicion is that the Brotherhood is using these emitters to influence the machine’s behavior somehow. Maybe giving it its orders.”

“I HOPE THAT IS NOT TRUE.”

“No? It’d give us a pretty damn decisive culprit.”

“YES. BUT IT WOULD ALSO MEAN THAT HUMANITY IS SCARCELY FURTHER ALONG THAN IT WAS EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS AGO. YOUR ANCESTORS FOUGHT GIANTS AND DRAGONS, NOT ONE ANOTHER.”

I sip from a hip canteen. We might be here for a while, so I brought food and water.

“I find it hard to believe there could have been any possible arrangement of the world that kept humans from fighting one another. How old are you, Rocky?”

“I DO NOT KNOW.”

“Well, what’s the first thing you remember?”

“A GREAT, IMPOSSIBLE LIGHT. THE CLASHING OF INNUMERABLE STONES. ROILING LIGHTNING, WEBBED THROUGH SKIES OF POISON. OCEANS OF LIQUID FIRE. WORDS WRITTEN UPON THE WORLD BY A VOICE FROM VERY FAR AWAY, YET LOUDER THAN THE HOWL OF THE RISING MOUNTAINS. TIME DID NOT MARCH AS IT DOES NOW. IT DANCED.”

“... Sounds like a hell of a time to be alive.”

“IT MAY HAVE BEEN. I DO NOT REMEMBER IT CLEARLY. IT WAS A VERY LONG TIME AGO. I WAS… A BABY, I SUPPOSE.”

I have an inescapable mental image of a two-foot stone knight with a carved pacifier and a plastic toy halberd.

“I’m sorry if I’m asking too many questions. You’re… kind of a curiosity, you know.”

“I UNDERSTAND MY PLACE, AND HOW I APPEAR. THE HUMAN, PERHAPS MORE THAN THE REST, HAS EVER BEEN AN INSATIABLY CURIOUS CREATURE. SECRETS ARE TO THEM LIKE A PRECIOUS FRUIT, JUST BEYOND THE REACH OF THE HAND.”

I snort. “Some of us more than others.”

“I AM ALSO CURIOUS.”

“What about?”

“THE CITY. THE WORLD. MUCH IS DIFFERENT IN THE LONG TIME I HAVE BEEN GONE FROM HERE. THERE ARE INCREDIBLE NEW TECHNOLOGIES. NEW ASTONISHMENTS. NEW CRUELTIES.”

“How long were you gone, again?”

“I LEFT THE CITY NEARLY FOUR HUNDRED YEARS AGO.”

“Wow. Okay, that was after the Reclamation. So you know about that, at least.”

“YES. I KNOW I WAS THERE, BUT THE SPECIFICS ELUDE ME. MORE AND GREATER DEATH THAN THERE HAS EVER BEEN.”

“... Yeah. After that… Well. Without having to worry about our predators for the first time in forever, things just… moved along. I don’t think our spirit has changed much, but our clothes and toys sure have. Our technologies feed us, cure us, keep us safe, but also crush us, stupefy us, and pen us in. It’s not their fault, really, I think we’re just… running so fast our legs can’t keep up. That’s the Brotherhood, I guess. They took their victory and never let it go. In the absence of any other foe, we looked inward. And it hasn’t been entirely to our benefit, in the end.”

“SO I HAVE HEARD. THE MAGE IS A CONDEMNED THING, NOW. TO BE BOUND BY THE SINS OF THEIR FOREBEARS. TO PAY IN BLOOD AND SHAME FOR THINGS DONE HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO.”

“Yep. Pretty much.”

“I AM PROUD OF WHAT YOU HAVE ALL ACCOMPLISHED IN THIS TIME. BUT I AM ALSO DISMAYED. THE ENGINE OF SALVATION IN ONE HAND, THE LASH OF PUNISHMENT IN ANOTHER.”

“I think we’ll turn it around. I don’t know we will, or have any evidence to back that up, really. But I think we will. We’ve weathered worse. All it takes is for the right words to be heard.”

“WHO WILL SPEAK THOSE WORDS, AGAINST THE YOKE OF DOMINION?”

“... I’m not sure. It’s hard to choose between living well and living long, in this world.”

“NO LIFE IS LONG. IT IS MERELY A MOMENTARY HAPPENSTANCE THAT LEARNED TO CAUSE ITSELF. IN THAT SHORT TIME, GIVEN A VOICE TO SING, WHY WOULD YOU MUMBLE?”

I don’t have a response to this that doesn’t make me sound like an idiot or a shithead, so I keep my mouth shut and see about peeking into the Brotherhood’s frequencies. I don’t turn my antenna on very often because of the aforementioned cyborg’s paranoia, but this is the Subterrane. It’s dark down here, and that counts for the invisible kinds of light too.

My receiver sniffs the air and tells my spectral readout software what it smells. The software unfurls its report in front of my vision, in a rainbow of quavering bands and juddering lines. The weird insectile heartbeat of radio.

Aboveground this would be just a flat block of signal, the graphs too overloaded by noise to pick anything out without specific guidance. Down here, it’s quieter. I try and get my internal computer to isolate the different frequencies, which is kind of like using your brain to tell your brain to perform a task. It’s hard to explain. The cyborgs in the audience know what this feels like. Automated thinking.

There are a few out there I can throw out. Shortwave radios, some little guys that are probably walkie talkies or personal comms de-keyed to talk to one another without the use of a tower. Or they’ve yanked the tower’s roots below the surface and hitched a parasite emitter to them. Either way, not unusual enough. I keep plucking threads out of the knot.

Hmm. Now here’s something.

Loudest signal down here by a mile. Loud loud loud. Yelling, shouting. Panic? Anger? Hard to tell. My antenna balks at it and I have to do a little soothing calibration before we can continue. The frequency is being actively modulated, maybe randomly off an algorithm, but it’s all very high frequency. Basically a shriek. Much higher than TV, radio, comm, anything commonly used on the surface. You’d need some specialist equipment to make this sound. My own emitters can’t broadcast at this pitch - I’m lucky I can hear it at all. And I have no chance of hearing what it’s saying at all. At this frequency band, with what appears to be randomized modulation but might not be, this signal’s data density is completely nuts. More than my little brain can handle. Whatever they’re saying, they’re saying a lot.

That could mean a lot of things. Just spam? Trying to make as much noise as possible, bombard the target and confuse it? Talking on multiple levels at once, multiple simultaneous arguments? Can’t know, unless Voldzet and his crew are able to dissect it.

But I might be able to figure out where it’s coming from. It’ll be fuzzy if these emitters were sprinkled all over the place, but a long enough game of hot and cold should lead me to at least one of them. If we get one of these things in our mitts we might be able to take it apart and really get somewhere.

I can either stay here and wait for Rocky to pick up on the killer, or I can go try and find out who might be trying to talk to it, and what they’ve been saying.

I tell him my theory.

“I AM… NOT EXPERIENCED WITH TECHNOLOGIES. EXPLAIN AS YOU WOULD TO A VERY OLD MAN. OR A NEWBORN.”

I run it past him again, but this time with a lot of metaphors about music and voices.

“I SEE. THERE IS AN OBJECT WITH A FIXED LOCATION THAT MAY CONTAIN PERTINENT INFORMATION, BUT MAY NOT. YOU COULD GO AND COLLECT IT. OR, WAIT HERE FOR A DEFINITE SOLUTION THAT MAY OR MAY NOT ARRIVE.”

“That’s about the measure of it, yeah.”

“WITH THE ODDS EQUAL, I FAVOR THE CHANCE AT IMMEDIACY. WE DO NOT KNOW HOW LONG IT WILL TAKE YOUR ALLIES TO UNRAVEL THESE SECRET CODES, OR IF THEY CAN AT ALL. WE KNOW THAT IF THE KILLER IS CAUGHT, JUSTICE WILL BE DONE.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I wish we had more of you. A whole team of Rockies, to spread out through the underground. That’d make this a lot easier, probably.”

“IT WOULD. BUT I AM… UNIQUE.”

It’s hard to pick emotion out of Rocky’s rumbling voice, but he doesn’t sound super happy about being special. I can relate. So I don’t pry.

Time passes. In the distance, I watch the Lowlifes go about their dark business, among the firelit shadows. They fetch water. Talk to one another. Leave and return. Fight. Embrace one another. Human procedure, just further down. Lollipop sticks and cigarette butts start to pile up. I take a few bites of nutriblock. It says this one is supposed to be chocolate flavor, but it’s closer to oversweet coffee. Aboveground, the sun comes up, but nothing down here changes, aside from a few more people milling about.

I’m the right kind of guy for a stakeout. I’m pretty much immune to cabin fever and I’m good at staying still for long periods of time. I do get bored, like anyone else, but I keep some zesty reading on my internal hard drive and hover the text in my field of view whenever the fog starts to set in.

This stakeout’s choice is Heartquake Manor by Lidhir Fumarole. Mr. Fumarole writes what I ordinarily would describe as toilet paper, but his books are so drenched in venereal disease that using it for that purpose is probably inadvisable. He writes what is essentially softcore pornography cloaked in a baroque post-Rec Inner Ring romance disguise. It’s hilarious. It’s so poorly written, so sweaty and obvious, that I honestly can’t tell if Fumarole is actually the greatest satirist of our generation. Oh, Lady Cilendrian… how thy bosom roils, as a ship heaved upon the tides of passion. I really cannot get enough of this crap, it’s the literary equivalent of a barbecue pork sandwich but it’s between two donuts and deepfried. Your brain will die of a heart attack if you read too much of this slop. Nothing like a good laugh to keep you awake, though.

Morning slides by. Afternoon rumbles past, too.

Could be one of the two pyromancers is awake by now. I wonder if Deepwell was able to get anything out of them. I’d love to be a fly on the wall in that room, but I’d just get swatted. Dusk doesn’t want me anywhere near any investigation he has final say in. Unfortunately for Dusk, that means he does not get to benefit from my investigative prowess. Insofar as looking at shit and talking to people counts as prowess.

More news might be breaking, too. I’m not sure what spin the media is going to put on this, but something tells me it’s not going to be in the arcanists’ favor this time. Because that would be like assuming the sun is going to rise in the East tomorrow.

Night falls again.

Rocky says after hours of silence, “PERHAPS WE SHOULD CALL A RECESS. YOU CAN SLEEP THROUGH THE NIGHT AND WE MAY RESUME IN THE MORNING.”

I shake my head. “I can go for a while longer. The pain in my buttbone is merely catastrophic, not apocalyptic.”

“YOU WILL BE LESS EFFECTIVE IN PURSUIT IF YOU ARE NOT RESTED. OR IF YOU HAVE A BROKEN BUTT.”

“I’m tougher than I look, Rocky. This isn’t my first day on the job. I can handle it.”

“VERY WELL. BUT DO NOT ATTEMPT TO OUTLAST ME. I HAVE NEVER KNOWN SLEEP.”

I snort. “I’m not macho enough to try an endurance contest against a guy who’s literally made of stone.”

“WISE. HAVE THERE BEEN NO CHANGES IN THE TIMBRE OF THE ELECTRONIC VOICE?”

I check the graphs I’ve minimized down to the corner of my vision.

“Nope. Doesn’t look like-”

But no. There have been.

“NO?”

“No, it has changed. Not by a lot, but there’s a shift in the modulation, and the frequency.”

I wind the recording back. The shift occurred just a few minutes ago.

“I would have missed it if you hadn’t said anything. It’s subtle, but it’s there.”

“WHAT DOES IT INDICATE?”

“Whoever’s talking, they’re talking faster.”

“DESPERATION?”

“Could be. Could be a reaction to something they’ve received. Stay frosty.”

“HOW DOES MY TEMPERATURE CORRELATE TO THIS EVENT?”

“... It’s just a turn of phrase, Rocky. Means ‘stay alert’.”

“I SEE. THE INTRICACIES OF MODERN LANGUAGE ELUDE ME ONCE AGAIN. PERHAPS I SHOULD OBTAIN MORE CONTEMPORARY PERIODICALS. CONTINUE MY STUDIES.”

“More?”

“YES. SINCE MY RETURN I HAVE ATTEMPTED TO EDUCATE MYSELF ON THE CURRENT CULTURAL LANDSCAPE OF WELLSPRING CITY.”

“Yeah? How so?”

“PARTLY THROUGH EAVESDROPPING. MOSTLY BY READING DISCARDED… NEWSPAPERS, TAKEN FROM UNDERGROUND REFUSE HEAPS.”

“Uh-huh. I don’t own a bird or a ferret, so I don’t have much use for the paper. Learn anything good?”

“IT IS DIFFICULT TO TELL WHAT INFORMATION IS PERTINENT AND WHAT IS NOT. A GREAT AMOUNT OF THE REPORTS SEEM SENSATIONALIZED OR EXAGGERATED. THERE IS A STRANGE FIXATION UPON WHAT KINDS OF CLOTHING PEOPLE WEAR, WHAT ELECTRONICS CAN BE PURCHASED FOR THE LOWEST PRICE, AND WHO SAID WHAT TO WHOM. I CAN TELL YOU THAT ANONYMOUS, FROM SECTOR EIGHT IS CONCERNED THAT HIS WIFE MAY NO LONGER BE FAITHFUL TO HIM, AND WHAT ADVICE THE PERIODICAL PROVIDED HIM. BUT I CANNOT TELL YOU WHY THE ADVICE WAS DISPENSED SO PUBLICLY, OR WHY IT IS RELEVANT TO ANYONE ELSE’S LIVES. I HAD HOPED CLARITY WOULD COME WITH FURTHER READING, BUT I HAVE ONLY SUCCEEDED IN EARNING FURTHER CONFUSION.”

I try not to laugh. “Yep. I uh… well, like I said, I don’t read the paper either. Give me a little time and I’ll see about finding you some decent reading. We’ll get you caught up.”

“THANK YOU. IT IS UNLIKELY I WILL BE ABLE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE WORKINGS OF THIS SOCIETY EVER AGAIN, BUT I REMAIN INTERESTED IN-”

He stops suddenly.

Then, with the speed of a striking snake, he whips his halberd forward and points its speartip roughly north-northwest.

“THERE. A LOCUS OF AT LEAST SIX DISTINCT ARCANE ENERGIES, MOVING WEST. POSSIBLY THROUGH A TUNNEL NORTH OF THIS CAVERN.”

I shut my book software and pop to my feet.

“Hell yes. Let’s not doink this up. There’s a tunnel at the northeast wall, there.” I point to it. “We’ll go down it and try and head our perp off.”

“YES. THE TUNNELS EMPTY TO ANOTHER SMALLER CAVERN IN THAT DIRECTION. DO NOT WAIT FOR ME. I WILL BE BEHIND YOU.”

I nod. “Wish me luck.”

“GOOD LUCK, BAULRIC FEATHERLIGHT. WIND OF THE REALM AT YOUR BACK.”

And I take off down the stone hill like a thumped-out gorilla after a banana truck.